I finished the Tailored Sweater

I tried an I-chord trim all around the neck & front edge on this sweater and it was just a no-go even with adjustments I made. I had tried increases at the beginning of the V-neck and decreases at the back of the neck & it was just a disappointing failure.

So I took the edging off again & just did a garter stitch border. I did 2 increases on different rows at the V-neck on both sides & 3 decreases on the first row of real knitting in the back of the neck. This seems to have worked.

All that remains to be done is blocking. I don't think I can skip this step because it looks a bit 'bunchy' on each side of the front near the shoulders.

This will be a nice cozy sweater to throw on during the long Canadian winter coming soon.

The yarn is Patons SWS, a soy/wool mix. It is a feltable wool, so handwash & lay flat to dry only. I knit this with Knitpicks.com 'Zephr' interchangeable needles, size 5.5mm using Tuulia Salmela's 'Tailored Sweater Method'. It is available at: http://tuulia.blogspot.com/2009/03/tailored-sweater.html . The pattern on the sweater is a basket weave done in three separate bands & feels very squishy.

Future Project

One of the next projects is going to be striped socks for my hubby. I'm lucky because not only is he a wonderful husband & friend, but the wilder the socks, the better. Yea, he's lots of fun!!

My Tailored Sweater

This sweater in progress will have 3 sections on the body of a simple basket weave for texture interest. It feels really squishy.

Yarn is Patons SWS, wool & soy. Don't really like using it very much because it is too easy to split, but the price was right. I get to use the new Knit Picks Zephr needles - they are very nice to use.

The Other Socks

I bought this wool (Fortissima Socka) at 'The Needle Emporium' in Ancaster, ON last week. It is 60% superwash wool & 40% polypropylene. I decided I would make a pair of socks from a pattern in Mary Thomas's Knitting Book. I used 64 stitches on 3 DPNs worked from the cuff down to the toe. I made 2 socks at once on 2 sets of DPNs. New to me was using a seam stitch down the center back of the sock, but which I discontinued after the heel turn was completed. I made a heel flap and used a Dutch heel to be different.

I am also attempting to learn how to read charts. My progress has been to read stitch patterns and simple instructions. So far so good.

The pic with the 2 finished socks has one of them on a wire hangar bent to sock shape.

The closeup is the pattern in the leg part. These pics are taken with the new Nikon camera, which I have not had time to explore very much. I am just resizing the pics for the web with software as some of the original pics contain 12 megapixels, a bit too large.

What up this Labour Day Weekend?

Well for one thing I am recovering from some day surgery, only it feels like it will take longer than a couple of days to recover from this. I really feel like I have had a setback & am definitely slowed down.

But that will go away & be part of the past soon.

I am taking inventory of what knitting I have on the needles or just finished lately. So here I go...

These are socks I am doing from Charlene Schurch's book, Sensational Knitted Socks. It is a 6 stitch tesselated pattern, which is a repeated use of a single shape.

The ribbing is K2P2 in two colours. Looks good so far & has sat for a week while I did another sock project & worked on a sweater for myself.